I do enjoy my tea… I think it might be my next rabbit hole to go down. I just got back from a business trip to China, and was gifted a few different black and green teas, loose and bagged. Really enjoying them so far.
I really want one of their…uh… Tea tables(?), which has a tap and temperature controlled kettle and drain built in. I’d drink so much tea…
I have some of those too. Problem is they’re nowhere near as efficient at cooling as ice cubes are and never cool my drink enough. It’s the melting (phase change) process that does the majority of the cooling with ice cubes, which you miss out on with these solid blocks.
I forget the exact maths, but a quick googling reckons it takes something like 84kJ to change the temperature of 1kg of liquid water by 20K, but changing the temperature of the same amount of ice from 0K ice to 20K water takes nearly 420kJ, or roughly 5 times more energy, which is why they’re so much better at cooling drinks…